Coulrophobia sweeps 2010 ARF David Ogilvy Awards

Joseph Clift, Warc

Opinion, 24 March 2010

As reported this morning on warc.com, the big winner at the 2010 ARF David Ogilvy Awards was the United States Postal Service, which scooped this year's Grand Ogilvy for its integrated 'A Simpler Way To Ship' campaign.

Along with a mailshot of over 20m direct marketing messages and a dedicated section on the firm's official website, the campaign included this TV spot (below), which has comprehensively "gone viral", gaining 130,000 YouTube hits so far and a lot of positive buzz.

The popularity of the ad (the creative's by Campbell-Ewald) could suggest that fear of clowns is more widely held than you might think. Further evidence for this view can be found in the viewing figures for this recent Wal-Mart ad.

The official term for the fear is "coulrophobia". Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it's particularly prevalent among those who were still children when a certain movie first came out on video...

More generally, postal services around the world are facing tough times, caused by the rise of email. With this in mind, it makes sense for the organisations to focus on the services they provide that actually benefit from the web, such as parcel delivery.

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